July 14, 2007
Realignment Posted by John Steele Gordon at 07:50 PM EST Five years ago, I wrote a piece about future political realignment
for The Wall Street Journal, called “The Next Great
Divide.” (The interested reader can find it at the Wall Street
Journal website, but he will have to fork over $2.95 to see it,
even subscribers. In fact even the author, I am not happy to
report.)
I noted that countries that trace their political traditions to
England usually have two-party, big-tent political systems,
divided by a single overriding issue. In this country, that issue
was first the size and power of the federal government. Then
there was a muddled period (the 1824 election went into the
House) before a new divide opened up, sectional in nature, with
the tariff and then slavery as the crucial issue. After the Civil War
there was another muddled period (the 1876 election was only
settled at the very last minute, and many other elections in this
period were very close). The next great divide was between
capital and labor. The Republicans had the better of the
argument between 1896 and 1929, but the Great Depression put
the Democrats in charge and they were able to push through a
broad array of programs on behalf of the have-nots in this
country.
The liberal programs proved so successful that the have-nots
began to disappear from the body politic, which became
dramatically more skilled, more educated, and more affluent. A
country of haves and have-nots became a country of haves and
have-mores. The third great divide began to close up, and we
are now back in a muddled period, characterized by close and
divided elections and personal vituperation, just as we had in
the 1820s and in the post–Civil War era.
So what’s next? Good question. Three factors might be noted,
however.
First, the left half of American politics hasn’t had a new idea in 50
years. It is still committed to economic policies geared to a
country with widespread poverty. On foreign policy it is
increasingly isolationist. Its main sources of support are all
backward looking: labor unions, civil rights organizations,
bureaucrats, and tort lawyers. Meanwhile the right half,
intellectually moribund in the ‘
’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, has been a ferment of ideas, by no means
all of them good (in fact some of them terrible). But at least they
are ideas that would have been unfamiliar to Franklin Roosevelt
and Arthur Vandenberg.
Second, we live in the most technologically revolutionary times
at least since the steam engine, only now change is happening
much more quickly than it did 200 years ago. To demonstrate
this, here’s a quick thought experiment. Some latter day Rip Van
Winkle has just woken up from a half-century sleep. He says,
“What’s new?” In answer you hand him an iPhone, which kids
are acquiring by the millions. See what I mean? And, to coin a
phrase, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The world of 2057 will be far
more different from today’s world than today’s is different from
the world of 1957.
Third, the new technology is rapidly reducing the control of old
political power centers (the mainstream media, political parties,
governments, labor unions, central banks) and raising that of
new centers, most prominently perhaps the blogosphere (just
ask Dan Rather). How it will all play out is anyone’s guess, but it
is not good news for the conservative party in American politics.
And that party today is the Democratic Party, deeply wedded to
old ideas and fighting hard to maintain the old ways of doing
things and sustaining the political power of fading forces, like
organized labor. That’s the very essence of conservatism.
My guess—or perhaps more accurately, my wish—is that
American politics will divide, at least in the near future, over how
fast and how far to allow market forces to dictate change, just as
in the middle third of the twentieth century it was over how far
and how fast to introduce the liberal programs. That change is
coming as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, and
market forces will drive it—all those kids mobilizing coalitions
over their iPhones. The argument will be over the hows and
whys and wheres and whens and whethers. Globalization and
the ever increasingly out-of-date monopoly nature of
government are two major areas where these battles will surely
be fought. I expect the Democratic party to be on the
conservative side of most of these battles and to lose most of
them as well, unless an American Tony Blair arises. I certainly
see no sign of him in the current bunch of Democratic
contenders.
It’s going to be very exciting, and I’d love to stick around and
watch it unfold over the next half a century. Unfortunately, I
expect I’ll find that I have an appointment in Samarra before
then.
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